


I Knew You Were Trouble (When You Came in Like a Wrecking Ball)

by WhenasInSilks



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: (but kind of), (not really) - Freeform, Aged-Up Peter Parker, Alternate Universe - No Powers, First Meetings, Flirting, Gen, M/M, Meet-Cute, One Shot, Peter Parker isn't Spider-Man, Pre-Slash, Wade Wilson is still Deadpool, Wade Wilson is still immortal, but he ain't no shrinking violet neither
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 08:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12907698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenasInSilks/pseuds/WhenasInSilks
Summary: Peter Parker’s actually doing pretty okay for himself. He’s got a full ride at ESU, a loving aunt, and the number of his high school crush newly saved in his phone. Sure, he’s got a little PTSD, but who doesn’t? He’s got more important things to focus on, like surviving grad school.At least until a madcap stranger breaks into Peter's apartment one night and starts bleeding out on his floor. And doesn’t die. And doesn’t die. (He doesn’t shut up much either, but that’s another story.)How does that old curse go? May you live in interesting times?





	I Knew You Were Trouble (When You Came in Like a Wrecking Ball)

**Author's Note:**

> I genuinely have no excuse for this. It’s too long, it’s practically all dialogue, and most of it unnecessary at that (I figured this is probably my one chance to write Wade Wilson and I wanted to get as much in as possible), it’s based around a painfully tropey scenario, and it contains tantalizing hints at a larger world/plot that I am never going to have the time to bring to life. I just wanted to have a go at writing Wade, because it seemed like so much fun and such a challenge (especially for a writer whose usual style tends towards “walking thesaurus”). And I wanted to write about Wade and a Peter who is not Spider-Man (role/power reversal!), but still kind of a badass. Only it turns out that writing Wade-babble is kinda therapeutic, and somehow, 7000 words later, here we are…
> 
> This is unbeta-ed. All the (probably manifold) mistakes are mine.

Peter’s first thought, when he awakens to an almighty crash from the direction of the kitchen, is that his roommate has been on another bender. He squints at the clock—without his glasses, the digits are little more than glowing red blurs, but he’s pretty sure that the first number is a 3. He groans faintly, rolling over on his stomach and folding the pillow up around his ears. He’s _really_ not looking forward to the conversation he’s going to have to have with Sung-min tomorrow.

Another, louder crash, followed by a poorly muffled expletive.

And now Peter is totally, 100%, cold-shower-and-three-shots-of-espresso awake, because he’s just remembered Sung-min is at a conference in Zurich until Thursday, and that is _not_ a voice he recognizes.

He can see his cell phone charging on the desk, its blinking green pinhole of light. The sensible thing to do, he knows, would be to call 911 and let the cops take care of it, but (he hears more clattering) there’s someone here, in his home, in his _home, and for a moment he’s sixteen again and his uncle is lying dead on the kitchen floor_ — He jams his glasses on his face, and swings himself over the side of the bed, feet cat-light on the floor.

He’s going to need some sort of weapon. Glancing around his room for inspiration, Peter wishes for maybe the first time in his life that he’d bothered to interest himself in literally _any sport ever_ , particularly one like baseball or hockey or lacrosse because a big ole stick sure would be a useful thing to have lying around right about now.

Squinting through the darkness, he sees something promisingly long and narrow leaning against his desk. He snatches it up, feeling his way along the handle until his fingers hit…

…straw. It’s a broom. It’s a _broom_. There’s an intruder in his house and the only weapon he has is a freakin’ _broom_ , and he’s not _really_ going to do this, is he? He’s going to put the broom down and lock the door and call the cops and—

The loudest thud yet and yup, looks like he’s really doing this. So much for a genius IQ.

He palms the cell-phone and jams it in his waistband as he passes, though, just in case.

He manages to open the door without a creak, then completely misjudges the height of the door-frame. He’s only spared by the string of inventive cursing from the kitchen that handily drowns out the scrape of bristles against the lintel. In spite of himself, some part of Peter is impressed, even though he’s pretty sure there’s no way you could get the antelope to stand still for that long. Call it an 8 for imagery, 4 for plausibility.

With his back to the wall, Peter edges his way down the hall. Is it just him or is it a lot chillier in here than usual?

It isn’t just him. Reaching the end of the hall, Peter easily sees the source of the draft, namely the _massive gaping hole_ where his living room window used to be. Glass litters the floor, the glittering shards looking like some kind of demented Valentine’s Day decoration against the pervasive backdrop of red and dear _god_ is that a lot of blood.

There’s something like a trail leading from his window and to the right, into the kitchen doorway, from which he can still hear the occasional crash and a low, continuous murmuring. Peter does some rapid thinking. This much blood means whoever is on the other side is either incredibly seriously injured, or incredibly dangerous, _or_ —he glances back at the shattered window and the broken and twisted iron bars beyond—very likely both. He’s just deciding his action when the voice in the other room crescendos suddenly, and he realizes it hasn’t been murmuring, but _singing_ , just as it bursts into chorus:

“ _I CAME IN LIKE A WREEEECKING BALL!”_

Peter’s feet start moving. Before his brain has fully caught up, he’s standing in the kitchen doorway, gazing at his unexpected visitor.

The man—at least, so Peter judges him from the breadth of his shoulders and the gravelly quality of his voice—is a brawny 6-foot-something, and dressed head to toe in some kind of red and black leather body armor. More than that is difficult to tell, between the bad lighting and the fact that the guy is bent almost in two, tugging at one of the kitchen drawers. After a moment, Peter recognizes it as the knife drawer. They’ve kept the more perilous kitchen tools child-locked ever since Sung-min’s attempt at midnight spaghetti had nearly ended in a trip to the the ER.

“All you ever did,” the stranger sings, his song liberally interspersed with grunts as he yanks on the handle, “was wreh-eh-ugh- _gner_ —”

The drawer groans under the pressure—it doesn’t take second sight to see what’s about to happen. A brief image of his kitchen, himself, and his unwanted guest stuck through by flying knives flashes into Peter’s mind, and he clears his throat.

“ _Erhem._ Uh. Hi there.”

_Oh, great job, Parker, fucking fantastic. Real assertive. Nice._

The stranger pauses his singing, but doesn’t bother to turn around. “ _Kiiiinnnda_ busy here, kiddo. How ‘bout you scoot along back to bed until the nasty ole stranger’s gone. Shouldn’t be too long, one way or another.”

Peter doesn’t really have an explanation for what he says next, except that he’s always been mouthy, even when mouthiness got his teeth kicked in on the regular back in high school, and really what are you _supposed_ to say when someone breaks into your home in the middle of the night to raid your cookware, singing pop-songs and leaking enough blood to put any normal person in a coma? It’s not like he’s got a script for this sort of thing.

“Well,” he says, readjusting his grip on the broom handle, “I take it you’re not Santa Claus come early, which begs the question: who the hell _are_ you and what are you doing in my apartment?”

The man straightens a little, as in surprise, and then slowly maneuvers himself around to face Peter. Any thought that the blood liberally coating Peter’s common areas might belong to someone else—some victim—is put to rest by the spasmodic quality of the stranger’s movements.

“Shows— _oof_ —how much _you_ know.” With a bit of grunting and a lot of flailing, he’s managed to turn himself around and props himself back against the counter. From here, Peter can see that even the man’s face is covered—eyes, mouth, nose, _everything_. “I mean,” the man adds, and even with the mask, it’s clear he’s giving Peter the old once-over, “I’m developing a pretty serious interest in finding out whether you’re naughty or nice.”

“Why’s there blood all over the place?” Peter demands, not—no, definitely, absolutely _not_ blushing, he’s not _fifteen_ for Christ’s sake.

“Oh, _that_.” The man waves a dismissive hand and slides a little farther down the counter. “Coupl’a bullet wounds, _no problemo._ Most’ve ’em have healed by now, anyway. It’s getting the fuckers _out_ again, that’s the real trouble. Think one of ’em’s lodged in my spine, making it a _bit_ hard to move at the mo-mo.”

Peter stands there gaping for a second, then yanks his cell phone out of his waistband. “All right, that’s it, I’m calling 911.”

There’s a click, and Peter looks up to see a pistol held in a surprisingly steady hand.

“Sorry,” says the stranger, and he actually _does_ sound apologetic, at least a little, “but I’ma need you _not_ to do that.”

Peter splutters. A dim part of him registers that he’s less thrown by the gun than the absurdity of the entire situation. “You’ve got a bullet in your back!” 

“Them’s the breaks! Come on, toss it here.”

Peter doesn’t move.

The man sighs, rolling his head back to look at the ceiling, and removes the safety with an audible click.

“I don’t usually bother asking twice. Toss the phone, or papa’s getting shooty.”

“You… you need medical attention,” Peter insists, a little weakly. _Come on, Parker, what are you doing?_

The man actually lowers the gun, staring at him. Then he bursts into raucous laughter.

“He was trying to call me an _ambulance_! With the lights and the sirens and the wee-woo-wee-woo—sweet Bea Arthur, it’s not even my _birthday_!” He raises a hand swooningly to his forehead, keeping the gun trained on Peter with the other, and coos, in one of the worst attempts at a southern accent Peter has ever heard, “You surely do know how to treat a girl right!” Then, in a more normal voice—at least, as close to normal as Peter had yet heard from the guy: “Still gonna need that phone though.”

“But—”

“Look, sugar dumpling, it’s not that I’m not touched, because I _am_ , although not as much as I’d like to be—heh, see what I did there? because so did _your mom_ — _but_ I’ve got everything under control.” He thinks for a moment. “Well, nearly everything. C’mon, toss the phone, and I’ll show you.” And when Peter still hesitates, the stranger adds, with a waggle of his brows that Peter can somehow see even through the mask, “I’ll let you play nursie.”

With a disgusted noise, Peter tosses the phone down the hall, as far away from this maniac and his oceans of blood as he can reasonably manage.

“Atta boy!”

“So tell me, exactly _how_ do you have being _shot in the spine_ ‘under control’.” The words are out before Peter can stop himself, because he’s dumb like that. Why stop at antagonizing armed and dangerous criminals when you could also be demanding their entire medical history?

The stranger doesn’t seem to take it amiss, though, letting himself slide all the way down the cabinets until he’s sitting on the floor. He crooks a pair of gloved fingers.

Peter hesitates, then takes two tiny steps forward.

The stranger doesn’t seem to notice his hesitance, being engaged in some kind of internal debate. “No, shut up, this is a great idea. I mean, have you _seen_ this kid?” He raises his head towards Peter, a speculative tilt to his head, before his mask stretches in a way that suggests a face-splitting smile beneath. “Nope,” he mutters. “Don’t care. Going for it.” He gestures Peter closer, more emphatically this time.

Peter takes another step or two, then crouches down, still well out of arm’s reach of the stranger.

The stranger rolls his head from side to side, making a show of scoping out the tiny kitchen. Then he leans forward, places a gloved hand next to where his mouth should be, and confides in a deafening stage whisper, “ _I’m immortal_.”

Peter rocks back on his heels. “Are you on meth?” he demands.

“Nah,” says the stranger. “Look, I’ll prove it.”

And before Peter can do or say a thing, he’s drawn a wicked looking knife from his boot and _sliced off his own damn hand_.

Peter gives a strangled shout.

The man lets out a noise somewhere between a yowl and a hiss. “Fuck me stupid with a rusty kazoo, that hurts. You think you’re ready, but no matter how many times— _Hoo_ , boy.” He gives his head a little shake, rolls his neck, and looks back at Peter, who is trying not to hyperventilate. “And now,” he announces grandly, “for my _next_ trick—” He picks up his _severed hand_ oh my _god_ and jams it back on the end of his wrist. He grunts. “Give it about 60 seconds, give or take.”

Peter springs into action, looking wildly around the room for something to staunch the bleeding. Is it too much to ask for there to be _one_ dishtowel that isn’t splattered with dried-on tomato sauce?

Apparently so. “I’ll be right back,” Peter gabbles, or at least he thinks that’s what he says—how intelligible it actually turned out is anyone’s guess.

“Miss you already!” the man carols as Peter dashes towards the hall closet and sweeps up an armful of sheets.

Peter skids back into the kitchen, clutching his linen. The man on the floor lets out a long gasp, placing his hands on the side of his face in an attitude of bashful surprise. “For _me_?” …placing his hands… placing _both his hands_ … “You shouldn’t have!”

“You— your _hand_ ,” Peter stutters, “it—”

“All better!” The man gives a cheery, if slightly awkward wave. “Well, almost. It’s going to take another few seconds for the tendons to reattach… Ah, ‘that’s the badger!’ as they say in jolly old Eng-guh-land.” He waggles his fingers.

“That— That’s incredible, you just— you just _healed_?” Peter frowns, his inner logician hard at work. “Unless it was just an illusion,” he mutters. “Some sort of enhanced hologram, or if the hand itself is a prosthesis—”

“No illusions! Want to see it again? You can keep the hand this time,” he adds, generously.

“What? God, no!” Peter lunges forward, but the man is resheathing his knife, chuckling.

“Pro’ly for the best. The fuckers _do_ grow back, but it takes a little while. Plus, never good to have too many severed limbs laying around the place. Nobody likes clutter, and it’s hard to stop with just one—like Pringles, you dig?—and if you collect ’em all they regrow into another me for twice the fun! Which sounds great, I know, but you know what they say about how you can’t have too much of a good thing? Crock of mother-loving shit, my dude.”

Peter is shaking his head. “Some sort of advanced regenerative abilities,” he says, half to himself, “but— You _regrow_ the limbs?”

“Like a lizard,” the man says, gleeful. “A sexy, sexy lizard, all dressed in red like riding hood. Grandma, you can eat me up any time you want.”

“But—but where do you get the _mass_ to regrow— God, I have so many— And the healing, is it a full restoration, or is there scar tissue, or—?”

He’s dropped the towels on the floor. As he speaks, he’s bending down, reaching thoughtlessly for the man’s wrist—

Peter flinches back as the man tucks his wrist out of reach.

“Ah, ah, ah!” he says, wagging an admonitory finger in Peter’s face. “No peeking!”

“Right, of course. Sorry, I just— How is this even possible?”

“No prying either. House rules, pumpkin pie.”

There’s enough danger beneath the playful tone that Peter is easily able to suppress the urge to point out that it is, in fact, _his_ house. With an effort, he drags his mind away from the miracle of science before him and onto the more immediate question, which remains, for what reason did said miracle of science see fit to _break into his house_ and redecorate his kitchen in crime-scene red?

“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

“Ah. Well.” For the first time that evening, the man displays something approaching embarrassment. “See, there I was, getting my stab on in pursuit of my noble profession _if_ you know what I mean, when some absolute dick-faced McGee pulls out an AK47 and just starts going to town! I mean seriously, who brings a _gun_ to a _knife fight_? Like, did you even _read_ the _invitation_ , Deborah?”

“Getting your stab on,” Peter echoes.

The man waves a frantic hand. “Hey, hey, quit it with the face, Judge Judy, these were _bad men_. Slavers and bullies and killers, oh my! They had it coming, and more importantly, so does my bank account.”

“You’re a contract killer.” The words are flat, as flat as Peter suddenly feels. He hadn’t—the man _broke in to his house_ for Christ’s sake. He’d threatened to _shoot_ Peter, more than once—when had he allowed himself to start harboring illusions?

( _But if he’s killing traffickers..._)

The man makes finger guns, which, under the circumstances, is both disturbingly ironic and not in the least adorable.

“I prefer ‘mercenary’ but, eh, who’s counting?” His manner is cheery as ever, but Peter gets the sense that beneath that mask, the man is watching him like a hawk. “Anyhoo, once they got me in the spine, I decided to beat a tactical retreat, but, unfortunately, that meant I had to leave all my knives behind. My poor pointy little babies.” He sniffs audibly, and wipes away what is surely an imaginary tear. “Still got their big brothers and sisters, of course, but they’re not exactly suited for detail work.”

“So you’re saying,” Peter says, slowly, to be sure he’s got this right, “is that you broke into my apartment so you could steal a knife small enough for you to dig a bullet out of your spine.”

“ _Borrow_ a knife.” He thinks for a moment, then laughs. “No, what am I thinking, I am most _definitely_ gonna steal your knife.”

Peter draws in a breath, and lets it out again. “And then you’ll, what—go back and finish the job?”

“Nah. Job’s done. Don’t mind a bit of collateral damage when we’re talking about the scum of your gosh dang earth, but I’m not exactly going back for second helpings.”

“You’re not worried they’ll come after you?”

“Oh, no doubt, no doubt," the man says blithely. "Gotta keep things interesting!” He cocks his head. "Speaking of which, hate to lead them right to ya, babe, so if that’s enough of the third degree, maybe we could get a move on, chop chop?” He giggles at the pun. “You get me one of your fine widdle knifeys”—pronounced ‘kuhniffeez’—and I’ll get out of that purty brown hair of yours.”

Peter touches his hair, which _is_ , at least, brown. “Are they likely to come here?” he asks, and his chest is tight, his heart doing strange and indecipherable things.

The man considers, then shakes his head. “Nah, you should be fine, long as I don’t stick around too long.”

“Would—”

Peter runs his tongue over the tips of his teeth. He remembers one summer, before his uncle died, when they’d all three of them—Peter, Aunt May, Uncle Ben—gone for a weekend upstate. A rare treat. There’d been a lake there, and kids Peter’s age, and a boulder that jutted out twenty feet above the water. They all jumped off, of course, at least once. He remembers how it had felt, when his turn came, standing there on the edge of the rock with his toes flexing on the very edge, staring down at the water. He’d meant to jump— _wanted_ to jump, but he hadn’t really known, until the moment his feet left the stone, if he would do it. Sometimes thinking isn’t enough. Sometimes, the decision is in the doing.

“Would another half hour be too long?” he hears himself ask.

The man looks at him, surprise plain in every line of his body.

“Or maybe forty-five minutes, or an hour. I don’t know, I’ve never, uh. Done surgery. Before.”

Peter braces himself for the chatter, for the frivolity, for the stupid, sugary pet names—“Aw, honey cheeks, I didn’t know you cared!” etc etc. But the man says nothing at all. He is so still, sitting there, still slumped against the cabinets, that Peter wonders for a heart-stopping moment if he’s actually died, after all this. He wonders, for a moment, if the man’s even real, as opposed to some mad figment of Peter’s fevered imagination. Surely no one, _no one_ could be this impossible.

“I’m not going to let you do surgery on your own spine!” Peter snaps. “It’s—” The word ‘crazy’ springs to mind, but somehow he senses this will _not_ go over well. Like, _at all_. “—not efficient,” he finishes, a little weakly, and folds his arms for emphasis.

The man lets out a breath, followed by a strange bark of laughter. “Probably okay to risk it,” he says, and it’s a moment before Peter realizes that he means he's going to let Peter go ahead. “Come on then, Dougie Houser, let’s get this circus on the freeway.”  

* * *

They end up with the man kneeling on a chair, half-hunched over the kitchen table. Peter does his best to convince him to lie flat on the table, so as to make this as close to a proper operating theatre as possible, but the man is distinctly unimpressed.

“Don’t do this often, do ya?” he smirks. Peter’s not actually sure how he can tell the man is smirking, what with the mask and all, but he can.

“What, perform impromptu surgery on superpowered housebreakers? No, actually, I don’t!”

“Easier to flex the spine, if you’re not worried about damage. And things can get twitchy when you’re dealing with all those spiney nervy-nerves, but if I’m sitting on my legs, I’m less likely to accidentally kick you in the nads, kapeesh?”

Peter has to admit it makes a certain amount of sense, although the idea of not being worried about damage is really not making him feel better about doing this. “I think we’ve got some rope somewhere, if restraints would help.”

The man gives an entirely disproportionate yelp of laughter. “Rope! Oh, baby bunting, bless your precious little heart.”

Peter is about to object when he remembers the twisted wreck the man had left of the iron bars covering his window. He gives a little shiver, and shakes his head to clear it. One physically impossible catastrophe to deal with at a time.

“Now reinforced steel chains, that’s another thing. Or adamantium, that’s a bitch and a half to get out of and I know from bitches. Oh! And there’s this guy—friend of mine—well, kind of a friend—more of a mentor, really—slash occasional nemesis?—but he had this _crazy_ webby stuff, I don’t know _what_ was in that shit but let me tell you, when he stuck you, you _stayed_ _stuck_. ‘Less you had a coupla Bowie knives to hand, but then, we can’t all be as awesome as me.”

“Do you ever shut up?” Peter demands, exasperated.

“Not _really_ , no, apart from the film _of which we do not speak._ Merc with the mouth, kinda my schtick. Gotta please the fans, keep those issues flying off the shelves! ’S’all down to marketing, really,” he concludes, sagely.

He also refuses to remove any part of his suit. “It’s comes pre-perforated for your convenience! Or are you too good for bullet holes?” he asks aggressively. Peter lets it drop.

He sees what he suspects is the real reason for the man’s refusal when he finally gets a look at his back. His suit is in tatters—knife slashes, presumably, Peter thinks, from when he was trying to get at the bullet himself earlier, though under the dried blood he can’t find any actual wounds. The entry point for the bullet is still visible, but only because some of the suit fibers seem to have healed into the skin. And as for the skin itself…

Peter sucks in a breath. He’s _never_ seen scarring like this, barely even imagined—

In front of him, the man tenses. One hand begins inching towards what looks like a gun holster.

“You know, you never actually told me your name!” he says, with desperate chattiness. “I’m Peter. Peter P—” Then he bites his tongue. If there’s one thing dumber than telling your name to violent house-breaking lunatics with inhuman powers, it’s got to be asking for their identity. This is _really_ not his night.

But the man actually seems to brighten. “Peter Peter, huh? Had a wife but couldn’t keep her? Put her in a taco shell and then it was Mexican food for breakfast lunch and dinner oh _boy_!” He smacks his lips. “Nice to meetcha Petey-me-lad. I’m your friendly neighborhood Deadpool!”

Peter blinks. “Is that a name, or a title, or…?”

The stranger—Deadpool—considers. “More of a calling, really.”

He twists around all of a sudden, rolling his head back to get a glimpse of Peter.

“Hey, hold still, will you?”

Deadpool ignores this. “You may be wondering, why the red suit?” he chirps. “Well, that’s so bad guys can’t see me bleed.”

Peter casts an eye around the blood-streaked wreckage of the kitchen. It looks like a Jackson Polluck painting.

“How’s that working out for you?”

Deadpool pitches his voice low—well, _lower_ —and husky—okay, huski _er_ , “Depends on how bad you’re feeling.”

So this is what they mean by immersion therapy. Peter barely blushes at all, even manages to roll his eyes. “Worse and worse by the minute, if you don’t _hold still_.”

“Well, just get _on_ with it, will you? I don’t got all century.”

Peter gets on with it. It’s horribly slow work. The human body is much, _much_ harder to cut than he’d realized, and he’s a little terrified about applying pressure in case he goes too hard and ends up puncturing something vital.

“Nothing you can do to me I can’t heal from,” Deadpool says, and the way he says it _sounds_ like a boast, only…

Only it’s pretty damn clear that however enhanced the man’s healing abilities may be, his pain receptors are functioning like any baseline human’s. Peter had offered him ibuprofen, booze, even (half guilty, half defiant) some weed from the stash Sung-min thinks Peter doesn’t know about.

“What a gracious host!” Deadpool coos, but refuses them all—apparently his super-charged metabolism means most ordinary analgesics are about as effective as a kiss from Mommy on a boo-boo. (Deadpool still lobbies pretty hard for that kiss, leaving Peter blushing and a little bit flustered, which he’s pretty sure is _not_ an optimal state for surgery, and okay, looks like he isn’t acclimating quite as fast as he’d hoped.)

Deadpool talks pretty much constantly throughout, which on the one hand is good, since the mixture of irritation and amusement his babble produces in Peter distracts him from the utter horror of performing unanesthetized, extemporaneous surgery on another living human being. With a _steak knife._

On the other hand, it means that Peter can just about track the amount of pain the man is in—the amount of pain _Peter is causing_ —by the way his voice grates and rasps and suddenly changes pitch.

After what feels like an eternity, and is probably only around fifteen minutes (it should’ve taken even less time, but Deadpool keeps healing around the knife), Peter locates the bullet, something he recognizes partly from the feeling of his knife point hitting something hard and smooth, but mostly from the way Deadpool arches his back and lets out an ear-splitting yell.

“Sorry,” Peter gabbles, “sorry, not a doctor, sorry!”

The ceiling shakes slightly at the sound of two, deliberate thuds from above—the unmistakable sound of a broom handle being banged against the floor.

Peter winces. He’ll have to find some way to apologize to Mr. and Mrs. Kim, although _what_ exactly he’s going to tell them, he’s got no idea. Frankly, he’s astonished it’s taken them this long to complain.

Deadpool, it seems, isn’t well-versed in the etiquette of tenement living—or, more likely, he just doesn’t care—because he pitches his voice even louder: “Take a chill pill, Thumper—some of us are bleeding out down here!”

Another thud.

Deadpool huffs out a sigh, shaking his head at the degeneracy of the world. “Some people,” he says, and in one movement, draws one of his pistols and aims it at the ceiling.

Peter drops his knife with a clatter in favor of grabbing Deadpool’s wrist and jerking it back up before he can fire.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Deadpool shrugs. “That’s what you get when you roll with the ’Pool, soul brother. Eye for an eye, kneecap for a kneecap, bang for a bang.” He makes a finger gun with his spare hand. “Blammo!”

“Do not shoot my neighbors!” And there’s a sentence he never expected to have to say, and certainly not in that tone of voice.

“Aw, but Mooommm!”

“I’m serious! Put the gun away!” Deadpool’s gun hand is jerking and waving somewhat erratically. He really wasn’t joking about the spinal-cord injury thing.

“You never let me have any fun,” Deadpool mutters, breaking free from Peter’s grip with an ease that has Peter suspecting he’d only been humoring him in letting him catch him in the first place. But he holsters the gun again.

Peter returns to his work, shaking his head. “You can’t even aim properly, for Chrissakes.”

Deadpool jabs an indignant finger over his shoulder in Peter’s general direction. “I resent that!”

“Yeah, well,” Peter mutters, “I resent _you_. Now would you please be still? I’ve almost got it.” He hesitates. “This’ll… probably hurt a lot, for a moment. Do you want something to bite down on?” He’d seen something about that in a movie once, soldiers in field hospitals biting down on strips of leather, back when the only anesthetic you got was bottle of whiskey and the hope of passing out from the pain.

“Breaking out the gags? Kinky. Me likey.”

Peter sighs.

And then Deadpool is gasping and twitching and underneath Peter’s knife something is moving and he’s never, _never_ in his _life_ caused another human being this much pain, never even _imagined_ it—

And then the bullet is out with a horrible, wet-sounding pop. Peter yanks the knife free as the wound begins to heal before his eyes. He looks from it to his blood-tipped knife, and, with a sigh, sinks to the floor, resting his head against the back of Deadpool’s chair.

“That good for you too?” the man asks from above, sounding a little winded. “Mind if I stick around for a moment, catch my breath?”

“Knock yourself out,” Peter mumbles.

Deadpool, of course, does _not_ catch his breath, but launches into a long and rambling diatribe about _Golden Girls_ and how Bea Arthur could take any of the Marx Brothers—or the Stooges, all three at once—in a knife fight. It gets graphic in a way which Peter should probably find disturbing, but somehow, in his present state of mental and emotional lethargy, ends up being almost soothing.

It’s the voice, he decides. The voice has been growing on him.

It’s hands down the strangest voice Peter has ever heard, a grating, gravelly rasp, the sort of voice a box of cigarettes would have if it had received elocution lessons from Tom Waits. Yet there’s also something bizarrely perky about it, like—okay, like a box of cigarettes taught elocution by Tom Waits that spends all its free time re-watching _Mean Girls_ and the collective filmography of Ellie Kemper. It _shouldn’t_ work, and yet…

There’s the sound of a throat being cleared. “You all right there, aged-up Holland?”

“Mmmm.” Peter can’t really muster the energy to reply in words.

This is, of course, before the man above him jolts upright, bringing his hand down on the table with a deafening crash, accompanied by the ominous sound of splintering wood.

Peter jolts back, eyes flying open. “Did you just break my table?”

“…maybz. _Or_ ,” the mercenary adds, in tones of great wisdom, “did your table break _me_?”

“The first one,” Peter says flatly. “Definitely the first one.”

Deadpool shrugs. “Bill me.”

“ _How_?”

The man shrugs again, then yawns and stretches theatrically. “Welp,” he says. “Time to mosey!” He smacks his lips and gets to his feet. “Mosey, now, that’s a fun word to say. _Mooosey_. It’s a cowboy word, I think. I always wanted to be a cowboy when I was a kid, except that cows are the devil’s fruit and the farmers take it funny when you murder their whole herd. Hey! Hey, here’s a joke.”

“Wait a mi—”

“No, no, it’s a good one. What are those dogs called? You know the ones.”

“Is this really the—”

“The penis ones!”

“… what.”

“You know, the ones that look like furry little dongs on legs! _Dong_ , that’s an even funner one! Like a dick bell. _Dong, dong_. They’re kind of like—” His hands measure out an oblong shape, an improbable length for either dog _or_ dick. “Penis dogs.”

“Dachshunds,” Peter says after his brain has recovered from this potentially scarring image. “Wiener dogs.”

“ _Riiiight._ Better a penis than a parakeet, I always say. Why did the cowboy buy a wiener dog?”

Peter opens his mouth and then hesitates, genuinely unsure whether it will be worse to encourage this, or not to.

As it turns out, it doesn’t really matter.

“To get to the same side!” Deadpool crows, slapping his thigh. “Wait, that’s not right…”

He turns and walks out of the room.

Peter scrambles to his feet and follows. “Where are you _going_?”

The mercenary raises his hands and sways back and forth, fingers snapping in the air. “I’m going _home_ , I’m going _home_ , tell the world I’m going—” He spins around, pointing a finger at Peter. “Or have you forgotten I have some mean nasty criminals after me? So I’ma make like a tree and skedaddle before they track me here, because I _gar-an-tee_ a good time will not be had by you. Bad bad, shooty shooty.” He makes a few gagging noises and staggers a little, a hand to his throat.

Peter’s head is spinning—like a centrifuge, he thinks. From the muddle of his emotions, anger separates, rising to the surface.

“Great. Fabulous. And just what,” Peter demands, “am I supposed to tell my landlord about _this_?”

He waves a hand at what had once been his living room window.

“Tell him some kids threw a baseball through your window,” Deadpool says, sounding distracted. He immediately ruins this unusually cogent suggestion by adding, “I can’t be expected to solve all your problems for you. You’re a smart kid, I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Once Peter has finished gaping in outrage, which takes several seconds, he gestures even more violently to the window and says, in a voice trembling with what could not possibly be anything but anger, “Some kids with enough strength to _tear the iron bars off my window_?”

Deadpool looks up at that, looking mildly surprised, and even through his fog of anger and disbelief, Peter still finds time to wonder how he manages to look surprised at all with his entire face covered with a red stocking cap.

“Hmmm,” Deadpool says. Then he brightens. “Tell him a rhino did it! Those fuckers’ll bust through just about anything. Knew this guy back where I’m from, ran around in a rhino costume—think he might’ve been a furry, now you come to mention it. Anyhoo, nice guy—well, I say nice, actually he was kind of an asshole—but not too bright and _really liked_ destroying things. Put him in a hamster ball one time and covered him with cheese whiz.” He sighs mistily. “Hashtag _good times_.”

Peter is, he thinks, getting a little better at cutting through the babble. “Where exactly _are_ you from, anyway?”

For the first time, Deadpool’s tone takes on a tinge of melancholy. “Somewhere damn far from here, that’s for sure.”

“I figured you were Canadian,” Peter says after a moment, keeping his voice light. “I mean, you sound Canadian.”

The man gasps, his gloved hands flying to his heart. “Oh. Em. Gee. I think I’m about to face plant in concrete because baby, I am _falling_ for you. Seriously, this might be the big one. Gee-ell-oh-vee-ee, pancakes and heart eyes forever.”

“Glove?”

“You said it, boyo. No, but actually though. It’s past your bedtime and I’ve gotta give some bad guys the old run-around. Parting is such sweet soy sauce, et cetera, et cetera.”

There are so many things Peter still wants to ask—to _say_ —starting with, “you know Shakespeare?” and running all the way to, “You’re a medical marvel and I’d like to do my thesis on you,” and “Seriously man, what about my window?” Yet somehow, with this embarrassment of choices, what comes out is:

“So that’s it?”

“What, expecting a good-bye kiss?” Deadpool leers at him and again, how does he _do_ that through the mask?

“No, I—”

Peter bites off his words on a sudden realization—not that he wants Deadpool to kiss him, because (a) no, (b) he likes someone else thank you very much, (c) the man smells like an abattoir, and (d) seriously, just _no_ —but that he doesn’t want him to leave. Not yet. This evening has been _so many things_ , and he just—he can’t process—but he knows that as soon as the mercenary leaves, no matter how much physical evidence he leaves behind (oh my god, is Peter’s house a crime scene now? _please_ don’t let it be a crime scene) it’ll feel like he was never here. The man is so utterly improbable, it’s like reality has to warp itself to make way for him. There are things—things he can’t put into words—that feel real now, and they won’t, he knows, after Deadpool is gone, and he doesn’t— He can’t—

Deadpool puts him out of his misery. “Well, sorry to disappoint, but I don’t kiss on the first date.” His voice is prim, and Peter is sure, in a deep, down to his gut certainty, that under the mask he is fluttering his eyelashes.

Peter snorts and gives his head a shake, trying to clear the muddle of denial and trepidation and a tiny, shameful dash of hope. (Surely it hadn’t been his imagination, that emphasis on the word ‘first’?) “Just get out.”

The man makes a heart with his fingers, then pulls them apart, making an explodey-noise. “I knew from the first time I saw you you’d blow up my heart, sweet thang.” He pauses. “’Cause of how, you know, it kept going boom boom. It was, whatcha call it. Foreshadowing.” He makes a ghost sound and waggles his fingers spookily.

Peter points towards the door. “ _Out_ ,” he says, and begins to stamp across the room towards the front door.

The mercenary giggles but does not follow him. “Hey, Petey!” he calls out, when Peter is halfway across the room.

Peter stops and turns around. “Yes?” he asks, putting impatience into his voice. The disappointment helps. If he focuses hard enough, he can almost make them feel the same.

“I’m gonna kill ’em.”

Peter goes hot, then cold.

The words are spoken quite calmly, which, in the face of Deadpool’s previous mania, Peter finds all the more unsettling.

“Those bastards that shot me. The ones who— With the kids. I’m gonna kill ’em.”

Peter’s throat is dry. Deadpool hadn’t mentioned kids.

“I—” he rasps, “I thought you said the job was over.”

“The part I’m getting paid for is. The rest—call it _pro bono_ , yeah?” Deadpool huffs out an ironic kind of laugh.

Peter is frozen. Is this really the man who described murder as “getting his stab on” and threatened to off Peter’s neighbors for complaining about the noise?

“Won’t be tonight. I’m low on ammo, and besides, they’ll have cleared out by the time I could make it back. By tomorrow they’ll have found the leak that led me to them in the first place. They might lay low—might even move some of their bases, change a few codes. Doesn’t matter.” He shakes his head, slowly. “The things they do— All those damn kids…”   

Peter is staring at Deadpool, the way he holds himself, all that coiled tension.

_Why is he telling me this?_

“But I’m going to get ’em.” The man’s voice is quick and low. “They’ll be coming for me, and I’ll be ready, and I’ll follow the rats back to their nest and then I’ll _wipe them off the face of the fucking earth_.”

There’s a word in Peter’s mouth, rising out of the furnace of his chest. He can taste it, hot and bitter as ash on the tongue.

 _Good_.

“Just thought you might like to know.”

Peter bites down hard and says nothing, but he nods, just a little.

Deadpool returns the nod. “Be seeing ya, baby boy.”

Then he’s turning away from Peter, who realizes what he’s going to do an instant before it happens.

“Don’t—” he shouts, but the word is drowned out by the _second_ shower of glass, and a red and black shape is vaulting through the pathetic remains of the window—

Tomorrow morning, when Peter’s doorbell rings at the ungodly hour of eight thirty in the morning, he’ll find a group of professional cleaners waiting on his doorstep.

“Hi,” the foreman will say. “This the residence of Peter Parker?” Then, when Peter nods, warily, “We were hired by a mister D. Poole—told us you might be needing our services.”

And when Peter protests he can’t really afford professional services:

“Oh, no problem there. Everything’s been paid in advance.”

And so Peter will let them in, will lead them to the living room window, then to the kitchen.

“There was,” he’ll say, awkward and unsure, “a bit of an accident, I guess. Uh—”

The foreman, looking deeply embarrassed, will wave his explanation away.

“It’s already been explained to us,” he’ll say, as one of the cleaners gives Peter a huge, lewd wink.

A few weeks after _that_ , the next time Peter sees the mercenary, he’ll demand to know what _exactly_ he had told the cleaners.

“Oh, that? Said we were doing some blood play and got a little over enthusiastic.” As Peter splutters, he’ll add, “Can’t blame a guy for dreaming!”

“ _Watch me_.”

But all of that is yet to come. For now, Peter just runs to the window and hollers after the mercenary’s rapidly retreating form:

“You could’ve used the damn door!”

The last sound he hears is Deadpool’s laugh, disappearing into the New York never-silence. Then he’s gone, and Peter is alone.

It's not until several long minutes have passed and Peter has finally scraped together the will to head back to the kitchen and assess the damage that he realizes that Deadpool has, indeed, most _definitely_ stolen his knife.  


**Author's Note:**

> So I realize I might be being a tease, given that I don't plan to continue this, but if you’re wondering about the backstory: Peter lives in a world which was a lot like ours until about six months ago, when a lot of weird shit started happening—sudden and improbable scientific breakthroughs, etc. In the entirely theoretical multi-chap version of this story, one of these scientific breakthroughs leads to Peter getting spideyfied at the age of twenty-whatever, and he turns to the only superpowered person he knows—Wade Winston Wilson—for help. Wade (who is of course from another, 616-ish universe, and just so happened to get dumped here about six months ago) is both delighted and horrified that he of all people now has to teach his idol how to be a superhero. And he has to do it fast, because all the weird stuff that’s happening? Yeah, it’s happening wherever Wade is, and it’s increasing at an exponential rate... (because apparently I can’t even write a one-shot without too much world-building and existential stakes ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯)
> 
> Song references are “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus and “Coming Home” by Diddy. The title is a mash-up of "Wrecking Ball" and Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble." The two jokes Deadpool mixes up are, “Why did the cowboy buy a weiner dog?” (He wanted to get a long little doggy) and “Why did the chicken cross the mobius strip?” (To get to the same side!) The second joke is my flatmate’s fav. He thinks it’s hysterically funny. I know nothing about medicine--plz try none of this at home.
> 
> Also, if you didn't already know, the cheese-whiz thing is 100% canon. Gotta love the guy. (see Deadpool vol 1, # 67)


End file.
